Nodetonet is a self-hosted mobile proxy and tunneling platform. There is no monthly subscription — you top up prepaid service credit and consume it only as your tunnels run. Idle proxies cost nothing. This guide walks you from an empty account to a tested, working HTTPS proxy in under a minute.
TL;DR: Register → top up $1 → download the Android agent → paste a token → create a proxy → run one curl. Done.
By the end you'll have:
- A live Nodetonet account with verified email
- One Android phone paired as a mobile proxy device
- A working HTTP or SOCKS5 proxy you can paste into curl, Postman, your scraper, or a browser extension
- A clear mental model of the panel so you can extend it to rotating pools, geo-targeting and the API on your own
1 · Create an account
Head to /auth/register. Enter a username, email address and password — or use one-click sign-in with Google, Discord or GitHub if you prefer. Confirm the verification link we send you, then sign in. You'll land on the dashboard.
The dashboard shows three live numbers you will come back to constantly: service credit (what fuels your tunnels), active proxies (what is running right now), and devices online (which paired hardware is reachable at this moment). All three update in real time — no page refresh needed.
2 · Copy your personal API key
The dashboard has a card titled Personal API Key. Copy it and keep it somewhere safe. You will not need it for the panel UI, but every REST call takes Authorization: Bearer <key>. Anyone who has the key can list, create and delete proxies under your account — treat it like a password.
If your key ever leaks, click Rotate on the same card. The old key becomes invalid instantly; any scripts still using it will start receiving 401 errors.
For more detail on key management and scope see understanding your API key.
3 · Add prepaid credit
Go to /balance. Pick any package — the smallest is $1, which is enough to keep a single tunnel alive for weeks and test the whole platform thoroughly. Click Pay with Card to reach the Stripe-hosted checkout. Credit appears in your balance within a few seconds after payment, via Stripe webhook — no manual refresh needed.
Nodetonet billing is strictly prepaid: you pay for what you use, and an idle proxy costs nothing. If you want to avoid running dry, go back to /balance later, save a card and configure auto top-up: set a minimum balance threshold and a recharge amount. When the balance dips below the threshold, the panel charges your saved card automatically and credits the balance, with a 10-minute cooldown to prevent runaway charges if something goes wrong. See saving cards and payment methods and pay-as-you-go pricing explained for a deeper look.
4 · Pair an Android phone as your proxy device
Open /tokens and click + New token. Give it a memorable label — something like "Samsung S24 · SIM1". The panel returns a short token string and displays a QR code.
On the Android phone, install the Nodetonet agent from the link on the /download page. Open the app, tap Paste token (or scan the QR), and within a few seconds the phone reports Status: Connected. Back in the panel, the token row flips to ONLINE and shows the device model, Android version and the live public IP the carrier has assigned it.
A few things to know at this stage:
- The phone must have mobile data on and the app running in the foreground or with battery optimisation disabled, otherwise Android may kill the background connection.
- You can pair as many phones as you like. Once you have several, you can group them into a token group to create a rotating proxy pool with automatic round-robin or least-connection device selection — covered in creating rotating proxy pools.
- Each Android device is a real mobile IP on a real carrier, so it carries full CGNAT trust. See what is a mobile proxy for why that matters.
Don't have an Android device available right now? You can still test the panel by creating an upstream-only proxy that forwards through a residential provider URL — see upstream-only proxies.
5 · Create your first proxy
From /proxies click New Proxy:
| Field | What to pick | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Title | Any label you want | Defaults to Tunnel #<random> if left blank |
| Protocol | HTTP for first test | Widest client compatibility; switch to SOCKS5 later for raw TCP apps |
| Port | Leave on auto | The panel picks a verified-available port on the edge server |
| Token | The phone you just paired | Pick "Upstream Only" if you have no device yet |
| Upstream Proxy (optional) | Your provider URL | Format: host:port:user:pass — see upstream residential forwarding |
Click Create. The panel connects to the edge server, reserves a port, and sets up the tunnel to your phone — this takes at most a few seconds. When it's done you'll see the full connection string.
6 · Test the proxy
The connection string looks like this:
http://u8x2:p7q1@sub42.nodetonet.com:48888Run a quick verification from any terminal:
curl -x http://u8x2:p7q1@sub42.nodetonet.com:48888 https://api.ipify.orgYou should see the public IP assigned to the paired phone by its carrier. That is the exit IP every request through this tunnel will appear to come from, until you either trigger a rotation or the sticky-session TTL expires.
You can also paste the connection string directly into our proxy checker tool to confirm latency, protocol support and geo-location in one click.
7 · Sticky sessions and IP rotation
By default a proxy is in sticky mode — the same phone (and therefore the same IP) handles all requests until you tell it otherwise. This is what you want for anything stateful: a login flow, a multi-step checkout, a scrape that must stay on one identity.
To get a fresh IP on each request (fully rotating) you either create a token-group proxy that round-robins across multiple devices, or configure a sticky TTL short enough that it expires between requests. On Nodetonet you can also append a session identifier to your proxy username to pin to a specific session within a rotating pool:
http://u8x2-session-abc123:p7q1@sub42.nodetonet.com:48888Drop the -session-abc123 suffix and every request gets a different device. For the full logic see sticky sessions explained and when to use rotating mobile proxies.
8 · Geo-targeting: country, city and carrier
A mobile IP isn't just "mobile" — it carries a real location and a real carrier. Nodetonet lets you steer that with username modifiers appended to the proxy username, so you never have to change the host or port. For example, to target a Turkish Vodafone exit you would use:
http://u8x2-country-tr-carrier-vodafone:p7q1@sub42.nodetonet.com:48888You can target by country code, city or carrier — or combine them. See geo-targeting for the full modifier syntax and available Turkey locations including Turkcell, Vodafone, Türk Telekom and İstanbul.
9 · Per-client access controls
If you are building a service for end users or resellers, Nodetonet lets you create proxy clients — each with its own username/password, IP allowlist, domain allow/deny list, data quota, expiry date, and concurrent connection (thread) limit. This means you can hand a customer exactly as much access as their plan entitles them to, from a single shared proxy endpoint, without them ever seeing your master credentials.
- IP whitelist — only requests from a specific list of IPs are accepted. See IP allow/deny lists.
- Domain restrictions — allow or block specific destination domains. See domain restrictions.
- Quota — cap total bandwidth per client. See quota limits per client.
- Thread limits — cap simultaneous connections per client. See thread limits per client.
- Time-limited access — set an expiry date so the client automatically becomes inactive. See time-limited proxy clients.
For a white-label or reseller setup, Nodetonet integrates with WISECP — see reseller features.
10 · Manage everything via the REST API
Every action in the panel has an equivalent API call. Here are the three most common ones to get you started:
# List all your proxies
curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $KEY" https://nodetonet.com/api/v1/proxies
# Get usage stats for a single proxy
curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $KEY" https://nodetonet.com/api/v1/proxies/<id>/usage
# Create an HTTP proxy programmatically
curl -X POST -H "Authorization: Bearer $KEY" -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{"protocol":"http","port":"auto","serverId":"...","tokenId":"..."}' https://nodetonet.com/api/v1/proxiesThe full reference lives at /documents, with an OpenAPI spec at /openapi.json. For a Python walkthrough see programmatic tunnel creation in Python and for your first API call from any language see REST API: your first call.
Beyond the basics: VPN and HTTP tunnels
Nodetonet is more than proxies. The same panel lets you run a VPN (WireGuard-based, ideal for routing a whole device through a mobile exit) and HTTP tunnels that expose a local port to a public HTTPS URL — powered by either the Windows .exe agent or an Android token, so you need no separate server. See introducing the Nodetonet VPN and the features overview for the full picture.
What's next
- Pairing an Android phone — every screen explained
- Rotating mobile proxies — when to reach for them
- Forwarding through a residential upstream provider
- Creating rotating proxy pools with token groups
- HTTP vs SOCKS5 — which protocol to pick
- All Nodetonet features
- Proxy glossary — every term defined
Or skip straight to the dashboard and start shipping.